I grin, almost as though I feel complimented.
“That doesn’t give you any sort of edge. Hyde will still rip you to shreds if you challenge Violet.”
In the next breath, he’s gasping for air, because I have him slammed against a tree in the forest near Morrigan property. His eyes widen, as my own eyes cloud over with the monster’s influence.
“I’ll torture you for all eternity if Violet isn’t as strong as you claim, after all this hope you’ve forced upon me. If she ends up being tortured by Idun for the rest of her immortal life, you’ll suffer by my hand for the rest of yours. You’re going to help us put Idun underground, and this time, we’d like to fucking keep her there without having to bury the entire Neopry House. Then you’ll help us subdue Violet, so that she doesn’t get stuck in monster mode.”
He says nothing else, and I release him, barely catching Arion’s trail again.
“I don’t know if I can subdue Hyde. I warned her she wasn’t ready, but she didn’t yet trust me enough to help guide her. I didn’t want to push too fast, but I had no idea things would escalate so abruptly. She’s wildly and unpredictably reckless,” he adds quietly.
“If we can’t get her back, I’m going to sever your cock from your body and feed it to a bathtub full of piranhas,” I inform him very seriously.
“I didn’t have to tell you anything. I chose to, because you’re my alpha,” he fires back, lips thinning. “I chose to because I was trying to earn her trust and pay my dues, since a thousand years of solid, substantiated, rogue beta work wasn’t good enough. Marta pretended to not even know me, because she didn’t want me telling Violet anything at all. I was going to tell her everything and start coaching her, since she’s outlasted all the other hosts combined. But there wasn’t enough time to earn her very wary trust, so I counteracted my mother’s curse, and I risked it all by telling you the truth. I didn’t have to do that.”
Fortunately for me, a shriek from ghosts has me tripping over my own feet, and Talbot damn near does the same thing. It interrupts the semi-decent explanation he was making.
I hate my beta.
My gaze lifts to find Violet’s ever-expanding parade of ‘ghosts,’ as they drop a few speakers here and there.
Because that makes perfect sense…
Talbot mentioned a gypsy name I haven’t heard in ages.
Jackals.
Telekinesis.
The Jackals were an old gypsy line with some harmless telekinesis skills, not too dissimilar to Shera’s line.
“Violet really can’t see ghosts?” I ask, allowing myself a moment for the pain to subside, before I push myself to my feet, staring over at the assortment of personalities.
“She really can’t,” he answers.
“And these are all…Violet?” I ask, as one ghost does the worm in the middle of the field they’ve nearly surrounded with speakers.
“In a manner of speaking. They’re all one suppressed section of Violet’s subconscious,” he answers.
“And you’ve been reading my Flame’s teenage journals,” I also comment, wondering why I didn’t think of that first.
“If you think reading her adolescent journal is an invasion of privacy, then you aren’t fully understanding the gravity of what this means,” Talbot adds, misunderstanding my tone, apparently.
I roll with it and simply stare at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
“Hyde takes the suppressed pieces of one’s subconscious and turns it into a personality. Or in this case, fifty or more personalities. That number took an alarming swing into higher numbers fairly recently.”
He swallows a little thicker, proving he’s been hiding a lot of his fear until now.
“I should have realized Violet was on the verge of losing control,” he continues, sounding damn near apologetic.
“You know this thing better than we do. What the hell is it up to with all the speakers?” I ask, mostly because I’m damn near numb.
I don’t know how to process this information. Especially since I’m more concerned with finding Violet than getting an explanation of what Violet’s monster is capable of.
Centuries of seeing Idun’s sharp, versatile, and damn near invincible power, versus over a year of watching Violet bobble her way through one crisis after another.
It doesn’t sound even near the realm of possible, even though it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve considered it a possibility.
“Ever feel like two worlds are colliding, and you don’t know which one is about to crack under the pressure?” I ask him, still unmoving, as I watch the ghosts toil and play.
It doesn’t make any sense.
At all.
“That’s because you see Violet, rather than seeing what Violet is capable of. I’ve made that mistake more times than I can count. As I said, a constant, cosmic coin toss, that girl. She works hard to be that good, because, as you can see, her head is entirely fucked up.”
Again, he gestures toward the ghosts, who are…playing telekinetic soccer with…Taylor Neopry’s head…
How’d they get his head?
“Is this the new world?” I ask Talbot very quietly.
Given the fact that Taylor’s eyes are wide and frozen open, that means someone has put his heart back inside his chest…wherever that may be.
This is power to the next level. Taylor is a powerful alpha, and the ‘ghosts’ are using his head as a toy.
“I can’t imagine Violet condoning this. While I certainly find it alarming that she’s this powerful, what scares me the most is the fact this isn’t Violet at all,” I tell Talbot.
“Hyde doesn’t grant the host’s truest wishes, Alpha. Hyde is the darkest recesses of the mind. Don’t be scared yet. This is just the beginning, if we don’t manage to find a way to suppress it again. Marta can’t make a spirit bind strong enough to hold it back anymore. But there’s another way. If—”
“I’ll bring Violet back by myself,” I snap, slamming him into a tree, and holding him by the collar of his shirt.
His eyes widen marginally, as my own eyes narrow to slits.
“I may not know what’s going on, and I have no idea what to believe right now. Hell, I don’t even know if I’m ready to find out. What I do know is that Violet will not be lost to her monster, and you’ll not be using anymore blood magic. I haven’t trusted blood magic in too many centuries to count, because of my own multi-cursed soul.”
I feel the monster attempting to rise to the surface, but I’m fortunately too weak. Otherwise, this could end up in bloodshed and a newfound, powerful enemy. Neither of which is something I want or need in my life.
“Even if it kills me, I’ll break into her mind and guide her. If I’m her weakness, then I’ll use it to my advantage, and drag her the fuck back into the driver’s seat,” I assure him.
His eyes go flat. “Only at full strength are you her weakness. Otherwise, you’re a gnat by comparison. Hyde will swat you down with effortless ease. You’d have to fuck an alpha as powerful as Idun in order to challenge Hyde, since it’s doubtful Hyde is going to power you up. Hyde knows you’ll choose Violet, and its figured out you’re a weakness by now. It’s been studying you as patiently as Arion studied you when you couldn’t see him. Except Hyde did it in plain sight.”